Author's note: Managed to finish this last night instead of today; a small form of improvement.

Thanks to the following reviewers: solitare1; Richon; 666snoopy

Warnings: Let's take the original warning of The Long Run because it still fits: Gory shit, like reaching The Walking Dead levels of gory shit

I hope you'll like it!

Chapter 39

After another day of travelling and one more night spent in the car, they finally arrived at their destination. The town was quite off the grid; quite a surprise considering it had a hospital. They had to take a side road in order to reach it, but almost missed the turn because it had been that inconspicuous. Naruto parked the car between a couple of abandoned ones and they got out, looking in the direction of the town. They didn't dare to park too close just in case so they would continue on foot.

Gaara examined the abandoned cars, briefly crawling into each one to check the boots.

"Anything interesting?" Naruto called out when Gaara stayed longer in a car than he had done with the others.

Gaara crawled out of the car, brushing some dust off his hands. "Some iron chains. Not sure what to think of that," he said contemplatively.

"Remember: we don't judge people's kinks," Naruto smirked.

It earnt him a scoff and a slap against his arm before they started making their way into the town, leaving the car with the questionable content behind.

The hospital was the focal point of the town, looming over the place, casting its tall shadow across the houses and the streets. The white building stood out starkly against the overcast sky, painting an almost ominous picture. The town itself wasn't particularly large: it had only a couple of streets, giving off the impression that the place had built itself around the hospital. The couple of cars littering the road had degraded into bare carcasses; steel frames left behind with the tires slashed and the engines ruined. Old bloodstains coloured the streets and the walls of the buildings a rusty brown. Some were in the form of handprints dotting the doors as if the ones who had left them behind had been desperate to enter the buildings. Others were nothing but long smears fading out into nothingness as if bodies had been dragged across the road. That was probably what had happened, but that didn't make the sight of them any less morbid.

"It's silent," Karin commented softly as they walked further down the street, sticking to one side of the road.

The silence was practically stifling actually. Not even the noise of zombies lumbering around destroyed the quiet; only the soft noise of the wind was audible.

"You seeing what I'm seeing?" Naruto asked in a neutral tone, but his eyes were narrowed and his lips thin. His grip around his crossbow grew tense.

"Yep," Gaara said curtly; the corners of his mouth pulled down.

Sasuke followed their gaze and noticed they were staring at the window of a grocery store – or what should have been the window. The glass was no longer present; the opening resembling a gaping jaw. In fact when checking the other buildings, he noticed none of them had windows anymore, making him frown. Even the glass doors had been shattered.

"There aren't any windows," Karin realised as well, glancing around her. "None of the buildings have them still. I suppose shattered windows aren't that strange given all the looting that must have happened, but …"

But this many shattered windows was rather unheard of. Especially when the noise would attract the undead. Unless this all had happened at the start of the apocalypse when they had still been unaware of what would attract the zombies? Even so, this was very odd.

They quickly crossed the road, keeping a careful eye out for any zombie that might attempt to surprise them. Entering the grocery store, Sasuke's attention was instantly captured by how bare it looked. Literally nothing was left. All the shelves were empty; there was nothing stacked behind the counters; nothing abandoned in the storage rooms. Not even a can had been left behind underneath a shelf. It was completely empty.

The two houses on either side of the grocery store yielded nothing either. No cans, no bottles of water or expired soda, not even the remains of food long gone. This far into the apocalypse it made sense, of course, that people had looted this town already, but in all the previous places there had always been at least something left, a can or a box.

"Nothing," Naruto murmured when they paused in the middle of the street.

"Buildings looted aren't that uncommon," Karin commented, but her eyebrows were furrowed as well and she clutched her knife tighter. "I mean, we've been looting places as well. Guess the people before us were just more thorough?"

Gaara raised an eyebrow, looking quite sceptical.

Naruto echoed his scepticism. "Looted, sure, I guess, but everything?" he asked unconvinced and glanced around. "This place is rather off the grid; how high are the chances that enough people managed to discover this place and literally loot everything? We almost missed the turn and we had baa-chan's directions to help us."

"Think this might be some kind of trap?" Sasuke asked warily, frowning.

"Smells like one if I ever smelt one," Gaara muttered, pressing his lips together.

Naruto worried his lower lip between his teeth, looking frustrated. "Look, you didn't notice that although all the windows are missing, there's no shattered glass lying around? Like none whatsoever. It's like they had a cleaning crew going around here."

He couldn't see any glass shards, Sasuke agreed after a quick look around. Not even some slivers left even though literally every window had been smashed.

"Don't know about you, but I wouldn't waste time cleaning up shattered glass when I'm looting a shop," Naruto went on and tilted his head to the left. "For that matter I wouldn't go around and knock out every glass pane either; that's a guaranteed way to attract zombies."

"I can't give an explanation for the missing glass, but they could have knocked them out during the start of this when people were panicking too much," Karin suggested tentatively. Her doubtful look said she didn't put much stock in her own suggestion, though.

Gaara shook his head while Naruto said, "Maybe," before sighing heavily through his nose, placing a hand on his hip. "Okay, call me paranoid, but look at these cars: all the tires are slashed and the engines are completely busted. Why would anyone go through the trouble of slashing tires and wrecking engines when essentially you would only need the petrol inside?"

"We also haven't come across a dead one yet," Gaara added; his green eyes roaming around the street. "There's blood all over this place, but not a single dead person. I guess the blood could have been left behind from when they were still alive and the zombies just wandered off with no living to fuck up anymore, but …"

Was it paranoid if they were really out to get you? Personally Sasuke believed that Naruto and Gaara were the least paranoid people he knew. So far their suspicions had turned out to be correct every time and truthfully Sasuke was getting a strange vibe from his town as well. There was the eerie silence, uncommon when zombies preferred to linger around towns; the missing glass; the entirely empty buildings; the destroyed cars …

If this was a trap, though, why would anybody go through the trouble of setting it up here? Like Naruto had mentioned earlier, this town was rather off the grid. How likely was it that this place had regular visitors?

"You want to go back then?" Karin inquired. She didn't sound accusatory or even taunting; she simply wanted to know their next course of action.

"We've been travelling for so long, it would suck if we just turn around now but …" Naruto trailed off frustrated and shook his head, licking his lips. "I don't know. I just don't have a good feeling about this town. Deidara needs the prosthetic, though. If that hospital still has them …"

Sasuke understood his struggle. Every single cell in his body was on high alert, near the point of screaming danger, but after travelling for so long and after the shit they had endured the last couple of days, were they really going to give up a chance to make life easier for Deidara? On the other hand, it would be incredibly stupid of them to just walk straight into a trap, especially when they had obvious warnings of it beforehand.

"I don't like any of this," Gaara muttered, shaking his head. "This whole setup just stinks like a trap."

"Should we take the car and do a quick drive around here?" Karin questioned, nibbling on his lower lip. "If there's a trap, we can escape quickly with the car."

"Maybe, but considering how these cars look like – that might be part of the trap," Sasuke murmured, staring at the rusting vehicles.

If their car ended up having the same fate, they would be fucked because none of the cars out on the highway had any petrol left. They had checked those before parking, just in case, and their search had yielded nothing. Without a car, they were screwed.

"Honestly, we might be fucked whatever we do," Gaara sighed aggrieved and exchanged a look with Naruto. "What do you think? We know this is likely a setup so chances are less likely we'll just fall into the trap."

Naruto thought about it before sighing. "Let's just go to the hospital and see if we can find the prosthetics there," he decided and adjusted his crossbow. "Hell, maybe we're both just being really paranoid right now; it's been a while since we were last on the road for this long."

"Can you really call it paranoia if your instinct is going to keep us alive?" Karin smiled wryly and unsheathed a second knife. "Come on, let's go. The faster we've searched the hospital, the faster we can leave this creepy town."

On their guard, they walked further into the town, throwing quick looks in the abandoned cars and buildings out of habit by now. No matter in which vehicle or building they looked, however, everything remained empty. If everything was indeed empty purely because of some truly innocent looting, then the previous visitors had been very thorough.

"Guys."

Sasuke and Karin whirled around at once, finding Naruto and Gaara standing right next to a red car, abandoned right before a crossing.

"You found something after all?" Karin questioned curiously.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure if it's something to be happy about," Naruto replied apprehensively and reached through the opened window.

When he pulled his arm back out he was holding a backpack. Squatting down, he placed his crossbow on the ground; Sasuke, Gaara and Karin automatically covered him, forming a circle around him. The unzipping of the bag seemed rather loud in the tense silence, making them all wince slightly. The first thing Naruto retrieved from the bag was a framed picture of a smiling couple with their hands resting on the shoulders of a very young, dark haired boy who was grinning even wider. A family of three – which looked rather familiar to Sasuke, who made a surprised noise.

"Hm?" Naruto glanced up at him. "Something wrong?"

"I recognise those people," Sasuke said without thinking.

"Are they from the compound?" Gaara asked bemused.

"No, I mean I've seen pictures of them before," Sasuke corrected himself. "It was during our first shared run, where we got trapped in that apartment building. When I was checking the other apartments, I found one with pictures of a family. This family."

"Not sure if it's a good thing we found this here then," Naruto muttered before placing the picture frame on the ground.

The next item he took out of the bag was an unfinished water bottle, followed by a Tupperware box of all things. When Naruto removed the lid the disgusting stench of rotting tomatoes greeted them; the sour scent wafting from the box. A half rolled up tube of toothpaste left the bag next with a box of hard sweets being the last item.

"Guess they forgot to loot this car," Karin mumbled bewildered.

Naruto was frowning deeply; his shoulders incredibly tense when he returned everything to the bag.

"What are you thinking?" Sasuke asked softly, though he had a feeling he already knew what was bothering him, especially after what he had just said about the picture.

He was right. "These tomatoes didn't start rotting that long ago yet," Naruto answered, staring into the bag. "If this bag had been here for a while, the tomatoes would have degraded completely already."

Karin tensed up. "You think the family is still around?" she whispered, looking around furtively around them.

"Doubt it," Gaara snorted and crossed his arms. "If they were here, you'd think they would slash their tires or let anyone else slash them?" He gestured at the puncture holes in the tires.

"Not to mention," Naruto added, "I bet if we lift up the hood, we'll find the engine trashed as well."

"Why would they leave their bag behind if they were still around?" Sasuke mused aloud.

Nothing about this whole situation made any sense. The family hadn't had any reason to destroy their own car, so that meant someone else had done it. What for? The tomatoes had only recently began rotting, which indicated the family of three had arrived here fairly recently still; perhaps only a couple of days before they had arrived here. So where were the parents and their kid now? Who had destroyed their car and for what reason?

Unwillingly his gaze was drawn towards the hospital looming at the back of the town. Could it be they would find more than solely prosthetics there? He glanced away, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. In doing so his attention was caught by a sign nailed into the wall of a former post office.

"Look at that," he said, gesturing at the sign.

"Safe zone," Karin read, following the arrow underneath the sign which appeared to point straight at the hospital.

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"You think people really turned that hospital in a safe zone?" she questioned hesitatingly; her thumb rubbing anxiously around the hilt of her knife.

"I want to believe that," Naruto said dryly and rose up, throwing the bag into the car. "I've seen enough shit, though, to know that we shouldn't immediately trust it."

"It's also too much on the nose," Gaara said critically. "Not sure if I would trust such a sign in a town that looks more sterilised than a damn hospital."

"Plus if it's a safe zone, why would they need to slash tires?" Sasuke remarked. "I guess that could be the work of another group, but …"

How likely was it that there would be two random groups operating from the same town without landing into fights with each other? Call him cynical, but he wasn't inclined to think this could be a coincidence.

"So," Karin broke the silence with a hefty sigh, "we're going to visit the creepy hospital which might or might not lead straight to our deaths?"

"Well, we're already here, what's the harm?" Naruto replied lightly, but his face was sombre. "As long as we're careful, we might actually make it out alive and in one piece."

"Appreciate your optimism, truly," she snorted and rolled her neck. "All right, let's go pay this 'safe zone' a visit."

"You know," Naruto broke the silence as they sat there, hiding amongst the bushes, "I know we already established that this town's probably a big trap and yes, I am aware how ironic this is going to sound considering the dead are literally walking around, but that shit looks like it could be part of a horror movie. I'm talking the main décor."

He wasn't wrong. With the overcast sky and how tall the building itself was, the hospital really looked like it was part of some horror film. The wide road leading up to the entrance had been gated off with rows of spikes which had a couple of zombies stuck to them, groaning quietly. The building and the road themselves appeared to be free of zombies, not even a spot of blood to be seen.

After discovering the sign on the post office, they had found more arrows indicating SAFE ZONE. All of them had pointed straight towards the hospital and all of them had looked suspiciously newish as if they were regularly replaced. As Sasuke watched, the banner nailed right above the entrance doors fluttered in the breeze, causing the words SAFE ZONE to dance as if they were part of a wave. The banner was written in an odd rusty brown colour and some of the letters were running as if the ink hadn't dried quickly enough before the cloth had been hung outside. Sasuke didn't want to think too much about what this ink might actually be.

"It's weird how we walked through the entire town without finding a single zombie, but here they are nailed to the spikes," Karin mumbled and wrinkled her nose. "Goddamn it, I really don't like this. An easy run for just fucking once, is that too much to ask?"

"Maybe Gaara or I bring bad luck," Naruto mused aloud, sounding only half-joking.

"Bad luck to others maybe, but we're still alive," Gaara muttered, darkly amused.

"Neither of you bring bad luck," Sasuke instantly refuted. "If you did, I wouldn't still be alive, so if anything you bring good luck."

"Aw," Naruto cooed and squeezed his thigh, pecking his cheek. "That's so sweet of you!"

"You know, as nice as it would be to see you two make out, this is so not the time for that," Karin said dryly.

Naruto stared at her incredulously. "You'd want to see us make out?" He sounded almost scandalised and involuntarily Sasuke smiled amused.

"Live with Naruto in one apartment and you'll see enough of that," Gaara remarked and got a punch to his arm for that.

"Sure, two hot guys making out, what's not to like?" she said flippantly. "But again, not the time or the place here."

"You really need to find yourself a guy," Naruto advised her gravely.

Before she could react, Sasuke tapped their shoulders to gain their attention. "Look, there's light in the far left window on the second floor," he pointed out quietly.

The light was faint and definitely not from a ceiling lamp. From the way it moved and the thinness of the beam, Sasuke guessed it had to be a flashlight. The presence of light in the hospital wasn't exactly reassuring. Perhaps he had grown too suspicious, but the sterile look of the town and the banner with SAFE ZONE weren't really instilling a sense of safety in him. He kept remembering the car with the backpack and the missing family. Were they in the hospital? Had they followed the signs? Could it be one of them with a flashlight there? Or was it someone else? The one who had put up the signs?

"There are cameras in the front," Naruto observed.

At least four cameras hung visibly in the front with two of them aimed at the entrance and one at each corner, facing the woods. Sasuke wondered if they had already been part of the hospital before this whole shit started or whether they had been a later addition.

"It's possible they don't work," Karin murmured, gnawing down on her thumbnail.

"But they might work if they have a generator," Naruto rebuked, frowning. "To be honest I'm not willing to test whether those work as long as we don't know who we're dealing with."

"I'd say the look of the town isn't exactly reassuring to begin with," Gaara grimaced, rubbing his right hand across his thigh.

"The front is out then," Sasuke decided.

Frankly he hadn't been really eager to just stroll through the entrance, not with how the road leading up to the doors was surrounded on all sides with sharp pikes. Yes, they used spikes as well around the compound, but the way these were set up on each side of the road solely … There was something very unsettling about it and not just because there were zombies stuck to them.

Because the spikes weren't only facing the woods from which zombies might come but they were also facing the road – yet all the zombies trapped against the spikes were on the side of the woods. The spikes facing the road on each side didn't make any sense because zombies were more liable to just wander straight through into the hospital instead of wandering to the sides and into the sharp tips.

"We could try going through the back," he suggested, glancing at the woods. Perhaps if they circled around the hospital, leaving a wide enough range between them and the cameras, they might be able to reach the back without being spotted.

"Where did baa-chan say the prosthetics should be?" Naruto asked.

"The third floor," Karin replied. "At the back of the hallway, unless they moved it of course."

"Of course it has to be the third floor," Naruto sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Because the ground floor would have been too easy."

"I suppose we've been in worse situations," Gaara said, but he was frowning, staring hard at the hospital.

"Keep that in mind when shit inevitably goes wrong," Naruto smiled humourlessly.

"We can circle through the woods, reach the back of the hospital that way," Sasuke said, tilting his head to the left. "That way we stay out of the cameras' range if they do still work."

"What if there are cameras in the back as well, though?" Karin questioned concerned.

"We'll try to find the blind spot then," Naruto replied, but his tone suggested he wasn't feeling very confident about that.

"We'll worry about that when we get there," Sasuke stated. "Let's first reach the back."

While the town had been completely devoid of zombies, that wasn't the case for the woods. In their attempt to keep the distance between them and the cameras large enough, they were forced to go relatively deeply into the woods where they encountered several zombies. The amount of zombies here wasn't as bad as the groups they had encountered a few days ago, but it was quite noticeable when they had just walked through the town without encountering them even once.

"Tell me, am I the only one who thinks there's something off with the lack of zombies in the town while they clearly roam around here?" Naruto grumbled, pulling out his bolt from the skull of a middle-aged woman. The second the bolt was out, her head plopped onto the ground.

"Well, we already established this place is fucked," Gaara sighed, kicking a dead guy to the ground before ramming his blade right into his forehead.

"Maybe they set up something around the town to keep them away?" Karin suggested; her eyebrows drawing together. "Like a gate perhaps? That could explain why they are here but nowhere in the town."

"Could be the case," Sasuke agreed and looked around them carefully. "But the perimeter has to be large then because I didn't see anything resembling a gate when we got here."

There were no discernible paths in these woods; no grass knacked to form a path, no signs of erosion anywhere. Did whoever occupied the hospital only leave using the road to the town? The silence, normally very welcome, was rather discomforting now when he considered what might await them in the hospital. He didn't want to assume the worst immediately, but the presence of the spikes, the sight of the demolished cars and the missing windows … He wasn't going to lie: he would be immensely happy once they were back at their car and could return home.

Their detour took up some time, cautious as they were not to get too close to the hospital. They managed to circle all the way to the back of the building and once there, they hunched down in the bushes again, studying the place.

"Doesn't look like there are any visible cameras," Naruto mumbled; his gaze roaming from one side of the building to the other.

"Considering how visible those in the front are, I doubt they would try to hide them here," Gaara agreed.

"They used vans to block both sides," Karin pointed out, jerking her head at the two empty vans parked on each side of the hospital. "I doubt they expect much traffic on this side."

Sasuke glanced at them. "So, we're going to risk it?"

Naruto sighed gustily, rubbing his forehead. "We got all the way here already … Might as well finish the job. Best if we don't separate, though." He eyed the hospital suspiciously. "I don't want to doom-monger, but this whole situation screams shady as hell and I'd rather not lose either one of you in there."

"Ready?" Sasuke tightened his grip around his katana.

"As ready as we'll ever be," Gaara murmured, switching his crossbow for his blade.

"Yep, let's go, we've got a prosthetic to find," Karin muttered.

Taking care to remain completely silent, they used the cover of the trees to get as close to the hospital as possible before they walked out into the open. They passed the van on the left and a glance inside showed there was nothing in there. The vines slowly twisting around the tires, acting like a natural lock, indicated that the van might have been parked here for quite a while already. Definitely used as a way to block and not simply parked here until they needed it again. The logo on the side was so faded, Sasuke couldn't even make out what it had originally said.

They halted in front of the faded red door and Naruto carefully tested the doorknob. It gave away relatively easily underneath his hold and slowly he pushed it open. The hinges creaked only very lightly, proof that this door was regularly used. Sasuke cast a look behind him and wondered why this door was used that often when the woods had shown no signs of being traversed.

"You think this backdoor is part of a trap?" Gaara whispered; his form tense. "Why would they need to go out of the back when they obviously don't seem to walk through the woods that often?"

If whoever was inside here used the backdoor as a way to leave the hospital, it was more than strange that they hadn't encountered any worn out paths when making their way here.

"Well, I think by now we've established that this whole situation reeks – and not only because of the dead," Naruto said grimly, right before walking inside.

The stench of blood and death hit them straight in the face like a baseball bat the second they set foot inside. Karin paled visibly, covering her retching noise just in time by smothering her face into her sleeve. Sasuke had to swallow a couple of times and bring a sleeve up to his nose in an attempt to muffle the stench somewhat. Even Naruto looked unsettled, grimacing as he looked around the small corridor. Gaara was grimacing as well, staring in disgust at the corridor.

With how much the place reeked like blood, Sasuke had expected the walls and the floor to be drenched with the substance, but instead the hall was completely white. Perhaps not as pristine anymore as it had been once, but there was no sign of blood anywhere. It was as if the hall had been recently cleaned, but so much blood had been spilt before that that the odour clung to the air.

"I've been surrounded by zombies so often, but never has it smelt as bad as it does now," Naruto rasped out. "It's like a goddamn waterfall of blood went through this place, what the fuck happened?"

"I feel like I want to throw up," Karin whispered aghast. "Fuck, what is this?"

Sasuke shook his head. Not even the town with that crazy priestess had smelt this horrifying and that place had been stuffed to the brim with dead people. Just what the hell had happened in this hospital for it to smell this strongly like blood and death when there was no sign of blood anywhere? Not even a smudge, yet it felt like he was literally breathing in blood.

"I really don't like this," Gaara murmured darkly. "This goes beyond not being normal."

"Come on, standing here won't do anything," Sasuke whispered even as he agreed with Gaara and took the lead, aiming for the only door that would bring them further into the hospital.

The glass was still present in this door, he noticed immediately and he quirked an eyebrow. Interesting, how this glass had been spared the treatment of its brethren in the town. He peeked through it, spotting an empty vending machine right across from the door. This door seemed to lead into another corridor and he braced himself when he pushed it open. The entire corridor – just as narrow as the one they had just left behind – was empty as well, not even a lonely bed left behind like Sasuke had encountered before in some of the other hospitals he had visited. In those hospitals most of the beds and chairs had often been randomly scattered around the corridors and the rooms, sometimes making it impossible to reach certain areas if a bed happened to be blocking a door. For all that those hospitals had been long abandoned, there had still been a sense of life clinging to those buildings, imbued into the broken and discarded furniture.

That wasn't the case here. This corridor was empty as well. The stench of blood grew even stronger here, if that was possible, yet again there was not a drop of blood to be seen. Where was that smell coming from? Was there a group of zombies locked up in a room around here? That would be the only way to explain why death clung so heavily to the stale air.

"There might be zombies locked up in a room nearby," he whispered. "That might explain why it reeks so much here."

"Maybe," Naruto said quietly, but he was frowning, looking like he didn't really believe in that option.

Gaara echoed his scepticism. "Zombies usually don't smell this badly, though – unless they're fresh corpses."

"God, I hope that's not the case," Karin murmured. "I've had enough of zombie killing for at least the next couple of weeks."

This corridor had five rooms with the sixth door leading to another corridor. All the doors were closed here but the windows in the middle allowed for a quick look inside. The first room yielded nothing; it was completely empty, not even a chair or stool to be seen. The second room was just as empty, but the third one …

Bile rose up, burning his throat, when he realised what he was looking at. The third room wasn't empty like the others had been. Two large grey tubs stood in the middle of the room and above them –

"What in the motherfucking hell," Naruto whispered horrified while Gaara's eyes widened in shock.

Two bodies hung upside down, their throats slashed through and their dead eyes staring at them through the window; the tubs filled with their blood.

AN2: And we have finally arrived at this part! Fair warning: the story will divert from the original version soon ...

Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.

I hope to see you all back in the next chapter! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!

Cuddles

Melissa

P.S. For more information about my upcoming and posted stories, please visit my profile.